“Manifesto of the Communist Party” – Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

Communism is coming. All of the old powers of Europe right and left to stop it

This is an acknowledgement that Communism is a force to be reckoned with

Communists need to stop hiding and make themselves be heard

Chapter 1 – Bourgeois and Proletarians

Bourgeois – class of modern capitalists, owners of means of social production and employers of wage labor

Proletarians – class of modern wage-laborers who by having no means of production of their own are reduced to selling their labor power to live

All written history is a class struggle and every era has different classes arranged by social rank

Modern social hasn’t got rid of class antagonism

It just has new classes, conditions of oppression that replace old ones

The Bourgeoisie has simplified class antagonisms by pitting 2 classes against each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat

Bourgeoisie created in chartered town in the Middle Ages

Guilds couldn’t keep up with production demand of expanding markets àmodern industry took over and leaders were the Bourgeoisie

Modern Bourgeoisie is a product of development and revolutions of production and trade

Each step has given the class more political power à ended Feudalism, patriarchal and idyllic relations trying men to their superiors and replaced it wash cash payment for work à pure self-interest

All energy put into religious fervor, chivalry and sentimentalism has been replace by cold calculation

All changes – free trade, personal value diminished à exploitation

These lower the status of doctors, lawyers, priests, poets and scientists to wage laborers

Reduced the family to a money-based relation

Bourgeoisie can’t live without revolutionizing production and consequently, production relations

à Preservation of modes of production maintained in class relations

Old established national industries are withering away

à Inputs from far away are making the production truly global à nations aren’t independent anymore and are connection Barbarian nations into Civilization

Countries like China cannot resist the West’s cheap goods and have caved to the West

They must adopt this mode of production or suffer the consequences

Bourgeoisie have created huge cities whose populations make up the majority of the country

The Barbarian and Semi-Barbarian nations are dependent on the civilized ones à the East is dependent on the West

Bourgeoisie is concentrating power into fewer hands and doing the same with political power

Laws, government customs/tariffs all to benefit them

Means of production = means of growth of Bourgeoisie

Eventually free competition had to step in economically, socially and politically

Notice that production changes are coupled by social, economic, political changes

We’re not yet at the point where any production improvements won’t do them any good

Any progress beyond now will harm them but creating its own enemy à Proletariat

The Proletariat sells its self to get a wage to continue to live and can only do so if labor can increase capital’s output

They are slaves to the Bourgeoisie and machines

It is dehumanizing and stripping them of any real skill

Making women relatively better off because their labor isn’t worth less than a man’s because the machines are stripping the men of their old value

Labor receives wages and forced to buy stuff from the production of the Bourgeoisie à from the landlords, shopkeepers, etc.

Lower middle class are squeeze out of the Bourgeoisie and into the Proletariat because their scale of production isn’t enough

Development must:

Struggle with the Bourgeoisie

Individual workers à

Factory worker force

Factory workers of an entire industry à

Factory workers of an entire region à

Factory workers of an entire country à

Everybody against 1 man

Proletarians are still disorganized – still fighting what remains of the monarchy for the Bourgeoisie à also landowners, non-industrial Bourgeoisie and petty Bourgeoisie

The losers of these battles become proletarians and the total number grows

Machines eliminate class distinctions and reduce wages to the same low level since all skill is low or non-existent

The class struggle grows throughout the whole world

Proletarians form a political part and force legislative actions for them: reforms, education, etc.

The inevitable happens à the bourgeois begins to splinter – they buy off some proles and some bourgeois join the proles

The minority accrue numbers slowly and steadily until it becomes a majority

It either wins through legislation or victorious rebellion

The Bourgeoisie’s greed is what kills it in the end

Chapter 2 – Proletarians and Communists

What is the relation between Communists and Proletarians?

They share the same interests but shape and mold the proletarians’ movement

They are only distinguished in two ways

They bring up and point out what proletarians problems are internationally

They represent the movement of the proletarians in their struggle as a whole

Communists are the most advanced and resolute of the working-class parties because they move them to act and understand the movement, conditions and goals of it all

The goal is to form proletarians into a party, overthrow Bourgeois supremacy and get all political control

They remind everyone of political and class struggles and urge the abolition of property relations (there’s historical evidence for this)

Only goal is to abolish bourgeois property which is the final and most complete expression of production that produces class antagonism and exploitation

ABOLISH ALL PRIVATE PROPERTY

But to what level? The level of the artisan? The peasant? Or the modern Bourgeois private property?

Capital is not just personal but social – a collective product that can only be set in motion collectively

When capital is made into common property, most also make personal property collective because it is also social à only its social character has changed.

A wage is the minimum needed to keep a laborer. It only produces a bare existence. Abolition of the private nature of capital only frees the worker from the existence of working just to increase capital and benefit the bourgeoisie

Labor only exists to benefit the Bourgeoisie in a capitalist society but in a communist society, labor exists to promote itself

Bourgeois society has capital as independent and with individuality but the living person is dependent and has no individuality

Bourgeois focus on freedom and the conditions of production lead to free trade which is purely selling and buying

Private property for 90% is already gone and only exists to benefit the few financially

When labor can no longer convert to capital, rent, money and individuals’ property can’t be made into bourgeois property – individuality vanishes

MUST ELIMINATE THE BOURGEOIS

Communism only prevents a man from subjugating the labor of others through appropriation

What if abolition of property leads to laziness?

It should have happened under bourgeois system but didn’t because they don’t do shit while the workers do everything

What about the disappearance of class culture?

That’s fine as long as it’s the bourgeois culture that disappears. It’s based on previous ownership which is based on previous ownership…

What about the abolition of the family?

The bourgeois family is based on capital ownership and private gain only to benefit the Bourgeoisie but Proletarians have nothing to pass on to their children.

We must stop parents from exploiting their children

Education is only there to indoctrinate us with apologies or excuses for the bourgeois system

What about women?

The bourgeois uses his family as an instrument of production to be exploited

Communists have always fought for women and don’t treat them like prostitutes like the Bourgeois do

Bourgeois marriage is legalized prostitution

What about individual countries

Communists want to abolish them because working men haven’t got any country of their own. They have only served the Bourgeoisie’s needs for themselves and to antagonize the Proletariat of other countries.

When the Proletariat take over, countries will disappear for a universal emancipation of the Proletariat

We won’t even consider any religious, philosophical or ideological objection to Communism because it goes without saying that views, ideas, etc. change with the conditions of material existence, which is all going to change anyway

We have historical evidence that the ruling class have imposed ideas on workers – new eras will erase the old, bad ideas

Christianity was broken or had been transformed by newer ideas à Bourgeois ideas will be changed too

Why will Communism abolish all of our sense of morality and eternal truths?

All of past society saw the exploitation of the Proletariat as moral – it’s only right to part from it

Advent of Democracy has change legality and it’s inevitable that proletarians will take over, take all capital and eliminate the Bourgeoisie

The Following will happen

Abolition of property, land, rent – all will be public

Heavy progressive/graduated income tax

No inheritance

Confiscation of emigrants’ and rebels’ property

Centralization of credit to the state

Creation of a national bank and allow the government a monopoly on banking

Centralization of communication and transport to the state

Extension of factories and production to the state – all waste lands will be cultivated and improve land according to a common plan

Eliminate all political parties that push for exploitation of one class over another

If revolution is necessary, so be it

Chapter 3 – Socialist and Communist Literature

A – Reactionary Socialism

I – Feudal Socialism

Actually, developed by aristocrats in England and France, focusing on problems of the Proletariat

Considered exploiters in power with no understanding of historical progress

Feudal Socialism à Clerical/Christian Socialism concerned with reinstating social order

Christian Socialism is the Holy Water that the priest consecrates the burning heart of the aristocrat

II – Petty Bourgeois Socialism

Small peasant bourgeoisie and Medieval Burgesses – a class that comes and goes between the Proletariat and the Bourgeoisie but depends on the Proletariat and will eventually be subsumed by them

This class has pointed out the problems with modern production and economics theories presented

However, they still try to uphold Bourgeois classist manners and the status quo

III – German / “True” Socialism

Was a response to French Socialist literature that described a world in France that had not yet come to Germany because there were no proletarians there yet

Germans took these ideas and filtered them through reason – without concern for any particular class

However, it was too early for the proletarians to win over. The Aristocracy and the Bourgeois were against each other. Proletarians didn’t want a violent upheaval

B – Conservative or Bourgeois Socialism

This sort of Bourgeois want to reform its class and interclass relations, rather than destroy the class altogether

But they also don’t want to take any responsibility for any oppression they might have done – just more harmony – ultimately ending in more oppression

C – Critical-Utopian Socialism and Communism

Early writers didn’t understand Proletarians as a class

Proletarians to them were just the oppressed and it wasn’t inevitable to them that they’d take over

They thought that they could plead with the Aristocracy and Bourgeoisie to make things better for them

As class antagonism built up, their ideas became sill and far less likely

They wanted to abolish class conflict without abolishing reasons why class exists in the first place

As divisions grew their relevance waned

Chapter 4 – Position of the Communists in Relation to the Various Existing Opposition Parties

Communists are the only ones looking out for the long-term interests of the Proletariat and the only ones able to do so

The primary focus should be on Germany because its Bourgeoisie have not yet won out against the Aristocracy and Proletarians can take advantage of this because they are more developed than the English and French were when they got their independence and squandered the chance to make it a Communist revolution

The Proletarian revolution will happen first in Germany and then spread

Communists every will support and fight for the abolition of private property and advancement of the Proletariat